Three Rivers celebrates 50 years of 'providing a dream'

Sunday

May 12, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 12, 2013 at 12:01 PM

For the select few students enrolled in Thames Valley State Technical Institute’s data processing technology course, the gleaming IBM 1620 computer beckoned. The year was 1965, and annual tuition was $100. Then, as now, there was no on-campus housing. But students “who cannot commute reside at the local YMCA, YWCA or in school-approved private residences in the vicinity of the institute.” Those quaint regulations have changed considerably in the decades since — and the hulking IBM 1620 has been replaced by a fleet of modern computers — but as southeastern Connecticut’s community college celebrates its 50th year, nostalgia is running high.

Adam Benson

For the select few students enrolled in Thames Valley State Technical Institute’s data processing technology course, the gleaming IBM 1620 computer beckoned.

The year was 1965, and annual tuition was $100. Then, as now, there was no on-campus housing. But students “who cannot commute reside at the local YMCA, YWCA or in school-approved private residences in the vicinity of the institute.”

Those quaint regulations have changed considerably in the decades since — and the hulking IBM 1620 has been replaced by a fleet of modern computers — but as southeastern Connecticut’s community college celebrates its 50th year, nostalgia is running high.

“When I first got here, Mohegan (Community College) had just merged with Thames Valley, and the culture was very, very different,” said Irene Clampet, who has coordinated Three Rivers’ marketing department since 1993. “I describe it as corduroy pants rubbing against each other.”

With a student body of 5,194 and total assets of $3.79 million as of June 2012, Norwich’s community college is deeply entrenched in the region’s economy, striking partnerships with industry giants such as Dominion Nuclear Connecticut’s Millstone Power Station and Electric Boat to provide scholarship and job placement opportunities for graduates.

“It’s touchable here, because 75 percent of our students stay in the region,” President Grace Jones said. “We have great faculty who embolden students to become better students.”

Three Rivers was built on land that was once a potato farm and site of a big-top circus, the byproduct of a 1992 merger between Thames Valley State Technical Institute, which opened in 1963, and Mohegan Community College, launched in 1970 and housed for most of its existence at the former Notre Dame Girls High School on Mahan Drive in Norwich.

Next to a pair of white laboratory coats hanging on a rack in his second-floor office, Three Rivers physics and mathematics professor Robert Niedbala has a large filing cabinet that serves as a kind of living museum.

Since 2009, the affable 65-year-old Norwich resident has served as Three Rivers’ historian, methodically compiling documents, course catalogs, photographs and nearly any other piece of memorabilia he can find that traces the institute’s lifespan.

“We provide a dream. We provide the ability to get an education and see if you want to go on, if you want to stay (in college) or if you want to enter the job market,” Niedbala said.

From one of the filing cabinet’s drawers, Niedbala pulled out the maize-colored 1965-67 course catalog for Thames Valley State – the first year a written guidebook was ever produced.
Portions of it are highlighted:

“Regular attendance is required of all students. No leave is granted except for extenuating circumstances. Students with excessive absences may be asked to withdraw from the Institute by vote of the Faculty Committee.”

As Niedbala and Wayne Silver, a professor emeritus in humanities and former Three Rivers academic dean, recall, settling on a name for the newly consolidated college was far from easy, since the bill of merger precluded either “Mohegan” or “Thames Valley” from appearing in the moniker.

“Finally, when Three Rivers emerged as the top contender, people took potshots at that. They said it reminded them of Pittsburgh, and I remember hearing one person say, ‘We don’t really have three rivers, we have two rivers and a tributary,’ ” Silver said. “I think in the end, Three Rivers as a name represented the best bureaucratic solution.”

For students like Chris Poulos, the name above the college’s entrance doesn’t matter as much as the opportunity he’s found within its halls.

The 66-year-old Colchester resident lost his job last year and decided to enroll in engineering classes on the way to a second career.

“I’ve just fit right in. I’m very impressed with the people I’ve met and the quality of education here,” Poulos, sporting a Navy baseball cap, said. “I’ve had the chance to follow an opportunity that I wouldn’t have if the school wasn’t here.”

Like Niedbala, Karen Aubin, of Jewett City, has decades worth of perspective to pull from when discussing the evolution of Three Rivers. An alumna of the Mohegan campus, Aubin has been involved with the local community college system for 35 years.

She’s currently an assistant to the academic dean emeritus and coordinator of the school’s prior learning assessment program.

“It’s basically gone from a chalkboard to all this wonderful technology that has been instrumental,” Aubin said.

She remembers the personality clashes between professors when Thames Valley and Mohegan became one facility.

“We each had our own cultures,” she said. “We have a new appreciation for each other. Before, I think it was always maybe a rivalry, and now, we’re one team, which is a wonderful thing.”

Changes continue on the campus. Last July marked the launch of Three Rivers Middle College High School, a magnet school run by Old Lyme-based LEARN that provides its 30 students a chance to earn college credits while pursuing careers in business and finance, engineering or hotel and hospitality management.

The school will hold its first-ever graduation next month.

Clampet, the marketing director, said introducing a younger wave of students to Three Rivers will position the school to remain successful for decades longer.

“What we have to offer is so much richer,” she said. “The faculty and students have always been our best assets.”

During a video tribute to the school on Wednesday, professor emeritus Jack McLean said teachers knew even before the merger that they were priming the region’s population for academic excellence.

“We all wanted to make a very big difference with all of these students, and I think we did,” he said.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.